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6 thoughts on “Facebook for scientists”

There’s a good reason for keeping it quiet :). It doesn’t do much … yet. Just some fun with widgetbox. Although for the new year, I do plan to make it do more :). Need to take care of some “plumbing” first

This is something that has been on my mind a lot, mostly because of all the social network news and hype. Facebook is interesting but every time someone asks me about it I can’t find a good example of how it can be useful (in a science/work related way). It does not help me to find interesting science news, papers, collaborators, manage projects, etc. Nature Network is slightly more useful in this respect but mostly because they are trying to make the forums more dynamic. In between Connotea, Nature Network and Scintilla it looks like they are going in the right direction but I have the impression that it is not there yet and I also don’t have an idea on how they could make it more useful.

I’m always leaving comments at Nature Network suggesting that it would be more successful if it were more like Facebook. Of course, I realise that NN has far fewer resources and developers. That aside, I think the interesting question is why Facebook works so well as a social network, rather than the actual content that it provides. The answer is the design (very easy to share information), the applications (easy to develop thanks to an API) and the browser extension (easy to follow the site without having to go there and login). I think it’s unfortunate that NN has gone for a rather closed design, rather than something that uses generic web2.0 technologies. It would also be nice if existing services like those you mention were integrated into it.

Facebook definitely has a different purpose, and I do think that Nature is probably the place right now. However, they problem with NN is the design. It’s just not easy and not developer friendly at this point of time. A lot of promise there, but still a long way to go.

please check out http://www.researchgate.com. It is a yound and promising Web 2.0 social network platform from researchers and for researchers. In contrast to NN really innovative ideas can be implemented in such a platform!